Opportunistic osteoporosis screening via the measurement of frontal skull Hounsfield units derived from brain computed tomography images

Background and purposeOsteoporosis is one of the most common chronic metabolic diseases, but detection and treatment rates are low. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the correlation between frontal skull Hounsfield unit (HU) values from brain computed tomography (CT) scans and T-scores of the lumbar spine and femoral neck from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans.MethodsPatients with ResultsIn total, 899 patients who underwent both brain CT and DXA scans at a single institution were enrolled. Average skull HU values differed significantly among patients in different bone mineral density categories (p p 2 = 0.343). The mean HU value in subjects with osteoporosis was 515, and the optimal cutoff value for the prediction of osteoporosis was 610 HU (AUC = 0.775, 95% CI 0.744–0.806, p ConclusionsClinical brain CT scans can assist in the detection of osteoporosis, and patients with an HU value